If you use Amazon EC2 extensively, then you’ve fallen prey to the dilemma of “to reserve or not to reserve”. It is however a simple question in the sense that for a reserved instance, you pay a lesser per hour fee but end up paying an additional one-time fee upfront. So what is the optimal break-even point where you know you are not spending more than required? EC2 pricing page gives a high-level number for break-even point of Linux Reserved Instances.
The following table illustrates the percentage utilization needed for the break even point.
|
Utilization
|
1 year
|
3 years
|
|
Light
|
28%
|
11%
|
|
Medium
|
41%
|
19%
|
|
Heavy
|
56%
|
35%
|
Having gone through this hair-pulling situation and from our experience of using EC2 for a while, PromptCloud shares a guide that will help you better understand the AWS schemes that suit you best. You simply drag the “number of days/months” and “number of hours” sliders and it displays exact numbers on pricing. What better can you ask for an approximate use case :).
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| Reserved instance for 1 year |
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| Reserved instance for 3 years |
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